Chapter 26 - Fountainpen

Karl was fond of old things and his parents owned and operated a stationary shop well stocked in antiquated fountain pens.  They were not very good sellers and only a few obscure collectors and hobbyists would ever want one.  It was the one little joy in Karl's life and a passion he could share with his father.

They both had their favorite fountain pen and his was an exquisitely made black laquer with gold inlays and an 18k gold nib.  He always used the same ocean blue ink and had a way of scratching the surface ever so gently to cause a pleasant sound of touching parchment.  He had gifted the pen to me a few days before the revolt and over the years had showed me how to care and refill the ink reservoir.  I rarely used it, but for a time and fashion practice my penmanship with it.

I largely had forgotten and buried it in my desk.  It somehow survived there unscatched when the shells and explosions rocketed the old Politiburo.  It was my reason for admiring all the bullet holes and find that beautiful pen completely untouched and working as perfectly as the day Karl handed it to me.

It turned out to be one of the most prized of Karl's possessions and everyone knew about the significance of this humble instrument.  It was one of the holy grails of all Artesian converts and by me carelessly handing it to a young girl like Anna it completely shattered her world view and it took her years to recover and realize it wasn't the greatest con and just a mere coincidence, even when there were a relentless number of coincidences.  She honestly admitted she could never be quite sure of my duplicity, but she had surrendered the outcome and only wanted to touch the Knut.

When her adoptive father was in danger, it wasn't the Colonel who rescued him.  It was that pen.  She handed it over to the authorities and pulled the greatest con of her life.  She terrified their Commissariat to thinking the Artesians were alive and well and in fact had a new leader.  They quickly revised all their strategies overnight in preparing for the coming wave of the Artesian revolution.  And as a shrewed master of craft she made the Colonel believe he had wronged them, which he did, but he in turned absolved himself of his sins, which he didnt.

She gave whatever she thought was fair trade and that secret in exchange for the gift of a pen.  I now understand why and scratched my head then as I do now at how trifling it all seemed and yet meant everything to Anna.

I really didn't want any secrets between us and asked Anna was there anything else or anything that we should explain.  She laughed and said she had always been telling me the truth and always would be honest with me, she just didn't know when to say it and had always been waiting patiently.  She still believed I was that secret leader and the champion of Knut, awaiting for further instruction.

I feigned for her to get me a sandwich from some obscure delicatessen on the other side of town.  She dutifully obeyed and left in her car and returned.  She wasn't joking.

Chapter 25 - Celebrity

It became quickly apparent that my connection to the Knut was well known and this made me a minor sensation and a celebrity.  Anna tried to avert me from realizing this as everywhere we went people gawked at me, but it was quite clear as young mothers brought their children like I was a politician to hold or kiss them.  People in uniforms would nod or salute and nearly everyone wanted to gaze or touch me like I was Karl Knutmudsen.

It would be about as close as anyone would ever get to touching the founder, the creator and like a god he had become to all of the Artesians the new generation of willing converts.

This courtesy did not seem to extend beyond me, nor to Sophie or our children.  This was with much relief and seemed I was now treated like the last of the originals who knew Karl first hand.  But why couldn't they say this of a baker or a waiter who served his meal?  Or of his driver or even someone who polished and pressed his uniform?  They all touched the creator and many surely still exist and can remember the old Commissar.

I remember then Greta Knutmudsen, his only kin.  She never married and we had met on a few occasions as Karl was very secretive and guarded about his past.  We kept in contact and she survived the war, the enemy soldiers somehow knew she was the sister of the creator.  While they never harmed or touched her with filthy intentions, they neither granted her any courtesy that they heaped on me.

We called more frequently after the war and she shared insight into her brother.  Family life was not blissful and quite strained as he never got along with their father.  He was a drunken lout and nearly ruined their family with his ineptitude.  But his ascending the Politiburo assured them a comfortable life and she was never found of wanting.  She continues as a school teacher in a sister institute of the Perkin's.  Everyone knows she is a Knutmudsen, but like the same treat her no different than if she wasnt one.

If there was ever a time to make the rounds of this cast of characters, perhaps we should dive into everyone who hasn't yet been mentioned.  While I cannot account for all my accounts for the past few years, there are many details, most mundane and quite routine that have transpired and involved many people who have yet to be mentioned other than in passing, including Greta.

Greta is eight years the younger of Karl.  They were the only siblings of his father Kurt Knutmudsen and their mother Gertrude.  The Knutmudsens were actually first cousins and as was custom for them to often wed.  Since neither Kurt, nor Gertrude had siblings, it became clear their offspring were unlikely to ever wed.  To others outside their customs they would find this revolting and equally odd, but that was how foreign customs go and to each their own.

Kurt Knutmudsen was indeed a drunk, but he was neither abusive nor cruel.  His was more the jovial kind that found delight in everything when in a stupor.  This offended the industrious senses of his son who wanted a mentor to look up to that was a captain of industry, instead he had an incompetent comedian for a father.

Gertrude put up with Kurt's antics as she preferred his drinking over his smoking as he would light up a chimney of smoke and with Greta's poor circulation and asthma was an impending death sentence on their household.  So the drink was Kurt's favorite past time and she plied it the best she could with what cheap liquor they could afford.

Greta largely grew out of her childhood asthma and only had rare bouts when she could barely catch her breath.  She found unique ways to compensate for her shortcomings and could still take off in a sprint or climb flights of stairs unassisted.

She was never found for wanting as Karl made sure after his appointment to bureau chief all of his spare income went to her.  She proved a reliable accountant and investor, but only enough to not raise suspicion.  She could have retired comfortably, but feigned that the war had erased all of Karl's assets which largely was accurate.

Some of Karl's old things she still keeps and many are treated like holy artifacts and relics.  She could fund a large ransom with just a few of his trifles and she has at least a thousand of them in one of many crates and barrels in their ancestral home.  You could never quite understand the Knutmudsens even without the Artesian nonsense.  Here was Greta who could be the richest woman in the world, sitting on a gold mine of Karl's things and all she does is donate them to museums.

There is an entire and intricate economy devoted in the trade and exchange of Karl's things.  It became such a serious problem and cause for concern that now any donations must go through the Central Administration and only after several curators have evaluated the value and intent of each artifact.  They are all numbered and catalogued with a blockchain to track their existence and authenticity as many replicas and fakes have also been produced in astonishing numbers and ever improving qualities.

I had gifted one of Karl's old pens that he had on his desk while still a Commissar to Anna when she first came to the Central Administration, much to her delight.  It was before she even mentioned the Artesians and like Oliver before she took it as an indication and waited for further instruction.  We both laughed that I was very adept at my ineptitude and skilled producing some hidden meaning when there never was one.  And to my astonishment she said it was not just any pen, it was the one he used to write many of his teachings as she said it had a unique flourish on certain letters that matched his first editions.  She said it really floored her and she almost gave it away that she was an Artesian the day he handed her Karl's pen and when she began writing with it and thought it a truly ingenius code word.  And for a time she thought me a truly mastermind of spycraft and her reason for being abrupt in saying she would be honest with me always as she was terrified that she had been found so quickly by a true master.  In time, she realized how very wrong her assumptions.

Then these writings did survive the fire, or were never in danger and Oliver, Michael and many of the Artesians were actually in contact with Anna's people.  It would explain a lot of things and now made more clear that the Commissariat co-opted what already existed and perhaps like a fool handed it out as a pen to Karl as I did to her not realizing it was significant and real.  That would be a simple explanation for the greatest mystery of mine.

I shared that theory with Anna and she said it was very plausible and Karl's writings does exist and I've been observing them, walking past and through them everywhere in her city.  But they were not entirely his own and he merely perfected what generations for centuries have tried and failed.  I started to understand and could make sense of a few words and phrases that sound like things from Antiquties or from many other bygone eras, like the Montresor many exhibits remixed each fall and largely the same presentation.

Then the language is now perfect if the Artesians have won?  Yes, enthusiastically Anna affirmed.  Isn't it brilliant and great that mankind finally achieved what it has yearned for since the dawn of time?  I tried to smile and nod in agreement, she knew I didn't understand and couldn't.  She patted my hand and wished I would know what she felt, but was happy for everything and each time she touched my hand she felt she was touching the Knut and it made her skin crawl with delight.

Chapter 24 - Our Foreign Enemies

Anna was my only window into a view outside a soldiers boot on my throat or a gun pointed in my direction of our shared and mutual foreign enemy.  While I knew they bred like us and naturally had woman folk and they in turn had children, it was my first experience and shock at how similar we really were and how much she reminded me of Sophie.

Why our two great nations had become vicious foes that lobbed epithets and waged wars, none of us could say the true cause only what was the reason for the current or more recent confrontation and it usually because of a previous one.

Anna was a historian and an astute one of both our cultures and painted a different picture that we once had a shared heritage and only a civil war between kin could have produced such a heated and bloodied legacy.  Only brothers know how to hurt each other.

We kept in contact, she had found a job and finally married a man of notable means who was a good father to Anna Two.  The little Anna was in an expensive school and spoiled with everything Anna did not have and this made her marriage blissful.  She laughed, while he was not a man of her type or character, he understood her basic need and performed more admirably than anyone.

The League was in its first year and like the old Republic's slogans of law and order it was largely the same, with new shared re education camps and a much larger penal system.  There was no suspension bridge spanning the continents, but it felt like one the day two cities became one.  And it was the sheer efficiency, the utter ruthlessness of the precision that made it very successful.

To the secret police's surprise, there were many more like Anna and it was unnecessary to carry on the old methods.  They were now quite bored and sometimes created their own Artesian like hoaxes to pass the time.  But there can never be another Karl Knutmudsen, these were all imposters and very poor renditions of a master.

Near constant the Colonel entreated me to return.  He felt such remorse that he had Anna's father reinstated and promoted to trade ambassador.  He professed that I was right and felt the wound in harming Anna had broken some unspoken promise.  I said we remain good friends and I was forever in his debt for rescuing me from poverty after the war and even before during the days of the old Commissariat, but I was too weary of forever fighting the legacy of the Artesians.  I still didn't know much of them or why the old guard were so terrified of such a hoax, only that it seems to have become real.  But I cannot see clearly anymore.

For Anna, she insisted I pay a visit to her foreign land.  While she and her husband had a modest apartment in a crowded urban district, she wanted to share everything and allow me to indulge and soak in all of her people's culture.  Her insistence was almost in sync and a counterpoint with the Colonel tugging me to mine.  A cruel jest deciding between a beauty or a beast.

Anna Two was now about the age of my daughter and she was very captivated by the pop music of Anna's homeland.  When she learned of the opportunity being thrown away, she begged her mother to allow me to be her chaperone.  And I acquiesced to Sophie's demands.

We took the next convenient jet and flew commercial economy to the main Capital air strip.  There we transferred to a larger plane that hurtled us at incredible speeds to Anna's home.  The air was a different kind and while everything resembled what we had at home from square buildings and curved roofs, to bright neon signs and paved streets, it had their own distinct flavor that captivated my daughter as she eagerly recited all the pop songs of her favorite foreign bands.

Anna greet us at the airport and drove us in her own car.  We stopped for a meal in a local restaurant and caught up on things that were more pleasant to do than over the phone.  She arranged for my daughter and Anna Two to travel on their own through the city and assured me it was quite safe.  I looked out the restaurant windows and saw many children, younger than our own wandering about with no supervision.  It was very foreign to me, but I again acquiesced and we spent the rest of the day alone.

She was always honest with me and said she was working again for the secret police, or had always been working for them.  She admired the Colonel who knew exactly who and what she was and only wondered why he allowed her to operate with such impunity for so long.  Now that I was no longer her foe she wanted us to be friends.  She promised as always, that her intentions were genuine and she did so with Karl Knutmudsen in mind.  We laughed it was like a halo of protection that has carried me my entire life.  Everywhere I go some convert or fan of the Artesians had made it their way to treat me like I was Karl's left foot that still walked the earth and thus wanted to kiss each step as if it was Knut's.

The wars were over, the prohibitions and taboos also no longer and even when she tried to explain what were the Artesians all about, I only heard gibberish.  Knut's words and slogans were everywhere.  They were so ingrained in Anna's homeland entire buildings, districts and squares were named after his words.  Even the restaurant, the names of the dishes, the gestures, all Artesian.  Artesian cuisine as they would call it now.

I lived, eat and breathed Artesian.  You could call the city Artesian, the nation, even Anna and still I could not fathom the concept and felt troubled that I would forever be lost in awareness and yet I shared space and was right next to the creator of all of this.  I told her about the phone call on that last day and she knew everything.  I told her honestly believed I was a fool and Oliver was right and she said this all is true, but it doesn't matter and she knew how I felt and thought most would have gone mad by now having experienced everything I had.

Anna would have made Knut proud a more worthy heir to his gospel than even Oliver or Ingrid.  We enjoyed their art museums and walked past giant murals plastered with Karl Knutmudsen.  They must have done it a thousand different ways and each one unique, yet connected beautifully to the Knut.  I could actually sleep easier here surrounded by it as I knew someone else was concerned and carrying on his legacy and I didn't have to deal with or care about it.

The Colonel called me again and we spoke about Anna and her dealings.  She confirmed she has always been honest with me and he is surprised as he tried to ascertain if this was just the greatest con, but he could not find one and he admit he was afraid he was being lulled into complacency and honestly believed she had no ill will towards me.  It's just like the day he nudged me in Wolf's office, she is an even bigger carnivore, but he couldn't understand why she hasn't devoured me.

I must not taste very well.  Or there was really something about this whole Artesian hoax after all.  But rather than embrace and pretend to be some kind of prophet for something I'll never understand, I'll continue to be myself and reject it all.  Everyone can do that now.

Chapter 23 - The secret police

We always address the secret police in lower case letters to accentuate their importance of keeping a very low profile.  While everything else had always been very loud and bright with massive slogans and song, there is little said of the secret police.  You shouldn't even call them a police force as they have nothing to do with public safety.

It was Anna who noticed this odd custom as she noticed my title and bureau etched in stained glass on my office door.  While everyone else had proper case, mine was almost hard to read the CADI of secret police.  She was very keen and thought me the best adversary that her father would have chosen to wage this asymmetric warfare across the hallway.  Anna would always be honest with me and gave the names of several young men who she had ensnared, including one of my assistants.

She never divulged what those stupid fools shared with her, but as quickly as they were outed they were dismissed to a camp based on the severity of their potential offense.  And being a member of the secret police, my assistant suffered the most severe of sentences equivalent to hard labor.  He was found wanting.

Anna resisted and said the temptation was too great and wanted to avoid any embaressment to my office, but she was on her own mission and the fool was so blinded and captivated he took it upon himself to drag up what files and documents to her apartment unaided.  She returned to me, unopened.  She did admit the filename on the folders were of things she was seeking and brushed her hand on mine that if I handed it to her she would gladly take them, but she gently pushed the files towards me and left the door.  She cared and had grown fond of me, she was a convert of Knut and what remained of him was sitting here.

The complaints began to roll in and my Colonel was stressed.  Even though every young man had been warned repeatedly she is a spy, they continue to break rank and rush to be by her side.  She has already let a few into her shallow embraces.  If there was ever a test of one's resolve and loyalty, none could do better than Anna, even the old Commissariats would be proud.

But finally it hit the fan when the son of some influential party member made himself a victim.  I personally warned Anna to not let that young man be ruined.  She herself claimed she acceded to my request, but he barged into her apartment thinking his family name was enough of an immunity.  The man was sent to the camps and Anna was reassigned.

The transfer was quitely made, an a dour young man with a sharp suit now sat in Anna's place.  He was bright and efficient and the work proceeded at a much quicker pace.  It would have been the same had Anna not been constantly barraged with attention.  We hammered out the details with the trade delegates and ratified the charter within six months.

It was to my disappointment, that the Colonel had arranged a cruel bargain.  Anna Two was allowed to go with Anna to her homeland, but in exchange for the release of several of our prominent spies who had been apprehended over the years.  This caused quite an embarrassment for Anna's father who was subsequently dismissed from his post and his family ruined.  I couldn't ponder the architect of the new League would be so petty.

But his mind was strategic and the spies that were released offered considerable insight into the true intentions and ways of our adversaries.  They did paint a genuine image that there was considerable social discord and there were many like young Anna, but still enough of the old guard who wanted to boil our oceans and ground our bones into dust in another real war.  Many still carried the outrage at how we ended the last one.

I tendered my resignation and left my office for the last time.  I chose to finally reject it all.

Chapter 22 - A League of Nations

A representative arrived in the city from our former enemies.  He arrived well dressed and with only his attache a beautiful girl with bright blond hair that made my assistants unreliable.  We met for lunch in a cafe to discuss the specifics of hosting a larger delegation of his colleagues to arrive later in the month.  It would be to discuss trade, culture and possibly warming of relations.

He left his attache a girl named Anna in my care to continue on the specifics and I arranged for her to have a desk and office across the hallway from mine, in Oliver's old space.  She was barely a girl of twenty and a recent graduate of university.  She reminded me of Sophie.

The foreigners had odd customs and one of which was they carried no last names.  Anna was simply that and somehow they knew how to address the correct Anna as both her mother and aunt had the same name.  Another was they avoided eating alone and she spent every lunch hour in my office sharing a box lunch.  This attracted the attention of many of the young attaches who always found an excuse to walk past her office and offer invitation to dine together.

She became somewhat of a famous legend during her month long stay that extended well past the trade delegation and she remained for a year.  I asked her directly if she was counter intelligence and she demurred and promised to be honest with me.  Her intentions were well meaning and tactics and methods the same.  She brought message from the foreigners that they indeed wished for peace and were approaching every avenue and possibility to ensure a productive outcome.  She was tasked by her Commissar to do everything to be as hospitable a host.  I asked of her assistance and youthful optimism on a new charter and legislation that we were attempting to craft.

Her eyes widen as she read our attempts at world peace without unholy weapons.  She laughed and thought it was an impossible dream and this sounded very much something an Artesian would dare pen.  She had studied everything about me and knew of Karl Knutmudsen and that he was a friend of mine and Sophie was even an able convert.  I was specifically chosen, nay targeted for this very reason as she had hope that it was true.

I told her she is sitting in the office of another friend who was a disciple of Karl who thought the same thing and for ten years waited patiently for any sign.  He laughed himself to death when he discovered I am not.  She found it odd and too much of a coincidence that I was surrounded by the Artesians, was in the absolute inner core and sanctum with Karl, Oliver, Ingrid and now Sophie and yet I knew nothing of it.  Anyone would be in disbelief, but she knew of the forced re education, the camps and helpful fists and boot kicks that confirmed I am just a fool.

Not quite clear as to why, the idea popped in my head and I saw in Anna's reflection of poor John.  I quickly gave young Anna advice not to become like Karl's last attache who died for no good reason for a cause he didn't even understand or believe in, but merely by association with the Knutmudsen name and legacy.  It was as if my old friend's arms continued to stretched past decades still and tapping on my desk, nudging my shoulders and now in the embrace of a beautiful young girl.  How I yearned for the Knut to go away.

The League of Nations charter was something we all had studied in school and known was from a bygone era.  It was an utter failure and while it gave rise to another institution by a different name, much like the Central Administration it too failed horribly.  But that dream always seemed to be reborn and take fresh vitality after each major conflict.  It was the Colonel's idea and grand concept to try once more and he found a kindred spirit in the trade delegation.

Anna was quite surprising in the depth of her keen awareness of our culture and history.  She knew more about me and Gustaf than most long time residents.  But with her foreign face and customs she stood out and was perfectly at ease with the constant gawking.  Her only visible emotion and distress was at the sight of the half breeds, the orphans of the war who had grown up and were often shunned by polite society.

She mourned for them and spent every moment of her spare time not in a musuem or cultural center at the local orphanage.  She immediately bonded with a tiny little girl named Anna and who carried on the tradition of not having a last name, but not by choice, only her birth mother abandoned little Anna and wanted to ensure she could never be found.

It was this I found the main catalyst for her extending her visit past the year and she asked a favor in allowing her to adopt the girl.  She didn't need my assistance as the orphans were eventually shushed out the door once they were a certain age and any offer to relieve them from the overcrowding was eagerly accepted.  But I accepted and arranged for Anna to adopt little Anna who I had to call Anna Two to avoid confusion.  It was after Anna Two that Anna One confided in me that she too was a war orphan.  The trade Commissar was her adoptive father.  It was a vulnerability she did not want shared and offered it to me like someone would hand a loaded pistol to take great care for them.  Their customs were foreign and hence odd and I couldn't understand why such a fact was so dangerous, but promised to keep it a secret.

Anna's mood continued to brighten and she became even more endearing, refusing any invitation for the others and spending all her spare time with me and Anna Two.  My Colonel nudged me and did so a bit forcefully and I nodded that she was very skilled an operator, that could best any on the secret police.  We joked it would take only a big fool to consider her switching sides and becoming an agent of ours and an even bigger fool to actually succeed.

Put I pitied them both and saw their brief happiness as the reason for the League of Nations and wiped the opportunity from my mind.  We continued our work and planned to the final draft with Commissariat and with the trade delegates the following year.

Anna had now become a common and pleasing fixture and I quickly forgot she was still very much the enemy and the gentle caress of Sophie's hand and her fingers on my tatter rags that felt like my death bed always quickly awakened me from that haze that only Anna somehow was so skilled at ensnaring everyone else.

Chapter 21 - Boulevards

Some normalcy resumed and the city was rebuilt.  The opportunity to widen some narrow streets gave a new sense of efficiency and revitalized some areas of commerce with shops and business concentrated in specific neighborhoods and zones.

In an odd sense the ravages and fires had leveled centuries of complacency and gave way to modern progress and within a decade very little of the scars remained, but one need not look too far to see them.

It also came to pass that Sophie and I married and began a family.  We raised a littler of three, two daughters and the youngest a son.  The new Commissar gave me a job in this new Republic and I found myself sitting in my old office, at my old desk.  Although fire and artillery shells had gutted the old Politiburo, the building was left standing and even though it stood for the old regime, a sense of undue pride mandated we preserve the structure.

There were a few nicks on the corner of my desk made by some bullet rounds and you could follow them and trace them to holes in the wall, most have been plastered over, but if you know where to look you can feel the grooves and divets.

Sophie wanted to hang up pictures and paintings, some recovered from the Montresor that unfortunately burned to the ground taking with it many priceless masterpieces.  I took one painting that Ingrid was fond of.

My salary was a mere fraction of what it was.  The old ways, the status of a signatory were all a memory and I was simply a citizen.  Even the Commissars, were now elected officials and the old Colonel a representative of our peers.  He was gifted the authority to select his staff and while he chose many of our colleagues from the former Politiburo, it was necessary as they knew how to govern and could quickly restart the world.

The names of bureaus, station chiefs and so on may all have changed, the emblems and logos also different, but the faces all appeared the same and one could be forgiven when walking through the lobby and hallways of the old Politiburo now renamed the Central Administration, that nothing had changed.

I ate a simple meal delivered by a box cart.  A scraggly old man ambled through the hallways hawking his wares and we each picked an item and paid the man.  How he made it up the stairs we never knew.

The monthly meetings were the same and the Commissars convened.  They were much longer affairs and lasted through the day and sometimes extended into the next.  There were more austere measures and none of the whisky and cigars in cordial smaller groups, only coffee and stale donuts.  The more miserable the offerings the more noble and honorable it all was.  Or so this was the ways of the Central Administration.

Acronyms became very popular and my title as the Commissar Senior Attache of Domestic Affairs and Inquiry was the CSADAI or shortened CADI and pronounced like how you would call someone who carried one's clubs on a golf course.  Where ever possible all acronyms started with CA, even if it didn't represent the Central Administration.

The wide boulevards spanned like fingers from the City Center and became the arteries of a new life blood that pulsed.  Each named after a great hero of the greatest war.  The city itself was renamed Gustaf in honor of Sigmund.

I saved part of a spare donut left on a meeting tray.  As it was my duties to fill the coffee pot and set the round pastries for each meeting.  Wrapped in a luxurious napkin that somehow was spared and a memory of a bygone era, I slipped it into my coat pocket.  The grease already congealed and pooling into a darkened corner that made me wonder if I should have used an extra napkin.

Food scarcity was still a major concern and would make for a good excuse to shoot the old Commissar Peter over crop reports.  The fields that were once lush and giving, had been salted and spoiled and while each year we flushed and cleansed what we could, it would take time.  Everything was rationed and we each apportioned a ration card with specific times and dates on where and when we could redeem them.

Even the choices were quite spartan and there really was only the choice of the same loaf of bread, the same tin of coffee or salted beef.  A small bag of vegetables and fruits were a luxury as was anything that we took for granted in abundance.

Gratefully, a CADI's salary was more than adequate in a time when everyone had only a monthly ration card and it afforded the small luxuries Sophie so missed.  Many of the old shops remained and their shelves while spaced more strategically, carried all the items she wanted.  It became a game of sort that I recall Oliver and Ingrid playing with the Montresor, now over a pot of jam or cheese and wine.

My other joy, the Island had been wiped off the map and no longer exists.  Nor was it replaced or deemed necessary.  The camps remained and so too the penal system under a new Commissar who no longer was responsible for the secret police.  That social apparatus of intrigue was now under a different commander, my old Colonel.

Even the lowly title of CADI afforded armed guards, a pair of young boys in ill fitting trench coats who followed me everywhere.  Their rifle butts clanking on their belts, but were of a high quality and fresh ammunition that never missed.  Still amateurs when my time I had full fledged and seasoned officers as attache's.  Now I have young recruits who did not know how to salute properly and were distracted by butterflies on a dog's nose.

It was through all this, I spent my spare evenings at a local pub.  I made new friends, some knew who I was, but many knew who I am now and I could have simply worn a badge on my sleeve.  There was Carl, Rupert and Brennan.  Carl was an accountant for a trade organization.  Rupert a construction foreman and Brennan the town drunk, but always the bearer of valuable insights.

Many illegal stills and breweries operated and the quality was dubious sometimes, but ours was more reputable and operated in the open.  Most were nothing more than speakeasy's hidden behind walls and in basements, much the way they survived during the occupation.  Old habits die hard.

The conversation was always the same, light and non-intrusive.  We only knew each other by our first names and livelihoods.  Beyond that we never pried or asked more than what was common knowledge.  This was how we became friends and preferred it that way.

Chapter 20 - The Horde

My brother was right.  There was another great war and the continents once again were plunged into bloody conflict.  It was to our misfortune our city was selected and the foreign hordes unleashed their wrath upon us.

One cannot imagine the sight of ten million soldiers, tanks, planes and all manner of machines and weapons of war converging and stampeding across an entire, hapless city.  We were made the focal point of the enemies entry into the Republic and they then fanned out unabated across the open plains and as far as the coastal provincial.  For a time, the Capital withstood a merciless siege before they too were overrun and the Great Hall of the People's was rendered asunder.

They came speaking the same gibberish that Sophie uttered to me and said was from Karl.  I found it quite odd and terrifying that these soldiers all sounded like Knut.  When I said a few of those gibberish words they took pause and delight and singled me out for some kind of unwanton praise.

As they went seemingly randomly down the streets killing and plundering everyone, they left me alone.  I could not understand why, were these the Artesians?  Was this the army of Karl Knutmudsen coming at last?

Sophie went into hiding along with Ingrid, Martha and many others.  Many of the hiding places were found and the people dragged out.  Sophie was fortunate and hers held out to the very last and by then the horde had taken their fill and moved on to the next cities, leaving just a small retinue of rear guard to hover over their prize.

My clothes were now tattered remnants, my shoes nothing but pieces of rubber tied with string and I wandered aimlessly through the streets I had always known, not sure of who I am or who I was.  Someone would call out to me, a few remembered me as the old Commissar and the foreign soldiers laughed even more when they understood what I once was to this city.

I kneeled in the city square next to the smash remnants of the Great Mural.  A few letters remained of my family name sake, still taller than I could stand.  I wondered when the Commissariat would rise up and say this was all in their plan and just another hoax or scheme to test all of us.  I would then get reassigned to Camp 47 or some other place, maybe finally thrown onto the Island.

Alas, none of this came to pass.  The Commissariat was gone.  The Party gone.  All monuments.  All the party songs.  The Artesian movement had indeed arrived, it was not a hoax as they so claimed it to be.  It was just their own hoax of a hoax and all their silly games that had been playing on their own people all these many generations.  We no longer understood what was real.

Someone tossed me some clothes and a pair of shoes.  I at first didn't know what had hit me and thought it was a dead bird.  I clung onto it thinking it would bring me sustenance later and walked to a burnt out alleyway.  There were a few scavengers, but they paid me no attention.  My shabby appearance and my tattered pockets offered nothing.

In my final desperation, I sat down and lay my head how I once did in that garden and wept.  Someone put a blanket up to my shoulders.  I then heard the thud of a bottle of water and the clunk of a metal pan with some food and when I came too, I was in a small room with a simple mattress, a chair and a latrine.  It felt like a prison cell, but much nicer than anything I remembered from the camp.  I then thought it might a hospital gurney, but saw no sutures or a IV.

I didn't care anymore, I didn't eat.  Didn't drink and just slept for what must have been days.  When I came too, it was to someone reassuring and caressing my arm.  It felt familiar, it was Sophie's.  She was dressed in the uniform the foreign soldiers wore and a pair of mismatched boots.  She somehow had found me and had me brought to that rehabilitation station.

She said the war had ended in a stalemate.  Our city was indeed overwhelmed and overrun.  Many other cities and the Capital were overrun, but the military had planned this and retreated.  Just like when Wolf's 331st was sacrificed, they then unleashed hell and drop unholy weapons atop the mass of foreign invaders.  None made it back to this city to retreat.

Sigmund proved worthy of Wolf's name and would have made him proud.  He died in his heroism, but not before he delayed the retreat of the Army.  There were none left, she was now the last.  All she had was me.

When I was well enough, she help me limp to one of the last remaining battlements overlooking the ruins of our city.  We then saw across the bay and saw that our once neighbors had been completely leveled and none survived the initial onslaught.  In irony the unification of our two cities merely spared us the worse of it.

A new Commissar was approaching.  He nudged me on the shoulder, it was my old Colonel.  Accompanied by the Major and even the Captain who had reinstated into the Army.  They all survived and welcomed me.  We all somehow survived, incredible, amazing they all said.

Chapter 19 - New Beginnings

There was a parade.  To celebrate a new suspension bridge built across the long river joining our city with another across the bay.  It was a joyous occasion when two cities are prepared to merge into one.  The respective Politiburo's threw huge galas and celebrations and twice the normal number of Commissars were in attendance as they began making plans for the union of two regimes.

I was tending and pruning a tree near the Montresor when Sigmund approached me and asked me about her sister.  Sophie was in a shop looking for some marjoram and herbs.  He obliged and entered the shop to speak with her.  They were seen in the window talking calmly then her arms were raised unfailingly and I knew something had upset her.  I assumed the worst and I rushed inside to hear what it was.

Wolf had been on the Island all along.

Sophie somehow knew and felt that was true even though they never showed it on any reel.  She just knew they would not go so lightly on a Commissar like Wolf betray the Commissariat and the Capital.

She then had to ask how Sigmund knew of this and it was Oliver who sent word through Ingrid and Martha.

There was nothing much anyone could do and neither Oliver nor Wolf would ever leave the Island.  We all have long came to dread that word, that place.  The Island.  The Island.

The festivities were about to commence and Sigmund had to part to return to the gala.  He invited us, but knew Sophie would not attend.  She always had a reliable excuse and would repeat it once more when the other Commissars asked of Wolf's daughter.  Poor Stephan weighs heavily on her heart.

I asked in jest of my brother if that bullet was still available.  He found it not very funny and bade me to lay low as there was news of possible war.  A big one.  He would soon be called to the front and he was concerned that with Generals like Wolf Gustafson being mistreated, there was dissension in the ranks and even talk of open mutiny on his own ship.  He was quite troubled by this.

The Commissariats naturally pay them no mind and reassign anyone who presses them any further.  And the Island is bursting at the seams from what my brother could gather from his sources.  The overseers are actually running out of creative ways to punish that many prisoners.

I resumed pruning the trees in front of the Montresor and Sophie found her marjoram and we went home.  We ate our meal in silence as we heard the chanting and the party songs as everyone celebrated the great union of a new, greater city.  A speech was made by Sigmund to the cheers of all in attendance.

Chapter 18 - No Way Out

I had enough.  I had since been released from re-education and living with Sophie in the Gustafson estate.  There had been no word of Wolf and only that Oliver had been dragged out of Pleagos and thrown onto the Island.

We were made to watch the monthly reels like everyone else and I winced.  Ingrid was staying with her family and as she was considered non-existant, she thankfully never had to see the films.

Several more Commissars had been reassigned.  I didn't understand now what it meant and thought so differently when they first reassigned Sigmund Delemont all those years before.  The pace of such movements and activity were increasing rapidly and we began to wonder if something within the state apparatus was changing, possibly collapsing.

The most unheard of events was Schols set fire to his own prison and released all the inmates.  He was shot by his own guards who then tried to round up as many of the escaped convicts.  Most were captured, a few fled into the outskirts of the city, fewer still blended within the city and some successfully stayed free for almost a year.

There was talk of open rebellion and it felt like the Artesians again, but there were none in sight.  None except Sophie and I tried my best to see if there was any tell, anything I missed in her that could say something about Knut.

And as quickly as things seemed to be unraveling.  Nothing.  Law and order prevailed.  I felt now it was a dystopian nightmare that they would reset every few generations, maybe less.  There would be another Karl Knutmudsen, another Artesian, a Muse, and whatever the Capital found amusing.

Chapter 17 - The Front

A young officer Wolf Gustafson was attached to the 331st Dragoons and tasked with holding the rear flank while the larger force could withdraw and regroup further down the battlefield.  The 331st were completely in ruins, exhausted and bloodied from 3 days of endless fighting.

He had rallied his company of 30 men that should have number 90 strong to hold off yet another enemy charge and lost half of them to injuries and death.  They took many times more their numbers, but knew they could not withstand another attack.

A scared soldier lamented that this was madness for them to continue this rear maneuver.  The General was more concerned with moving his heavy artillery pieces out of harms way and sacrificing the 331st.  Wolf agreed and said each howitzer saved was the price of a dozen soldiers and they've already paid their weight many times over.  They probably will all die and Wolf was just 23.

The senior Sergeant motioned and they saw the enemy begin to stir.  They braced for another charge and Wolf felt this would be his last and if not, surely his final day.

The enemy never came and instead withdrew.

To this day, Wolf never quite understood why they would make such a tactical blunder.  The opposing commanders must have seen the 331st consisting of just a few measly men and they could have smashed through them and then overrun the rest of the Army.  They would have won the battle.

The surviving members of the 331st were all awarded medals and hailed as heroes for saving the day.  Wolf was quickly promoted and placed on the Division General's staff and by the end of the war a Colonel.

He made sure he never such a tactical error and gave no mercy nor opportunity.  He earned his name and needed no other nickname than The Wolf Gustafson.

To Wolf's surprise as he was mulling about the Capital commons he bumped into someone from the 331st, his old regiment.  It was the young soldier he shared a foxhole with on that day.  He was now a retired veteran and strolled the commons for daily exercise.  They recognized each other instantly and embraced with pleasantries.  He asked of this person and of that and they went down the list of everyone they knew, there few of them left, even fewer as most were killed in action before the wars end.

He knew of General now as a Commissar and saluted him, but Wolf bade him never do that as they are equals when they are alone.  His concern was now of another soldier who they remember from one of the final battles and had lost a leg and his right eye.  Suicide, point of fact he said.  He took his own life not too long after the wars end.  For the weirdest of reasons, he couldn't stop a ringing in his ears.

They bid adieu and Wolf waited for Sophie and I to meet him as we then walked to the Great Hall.  The council would convene under the mammoth canvas.  At least a million people could fit standing under that canopy and here we would stand dwarfed within.

The council convened of 3 of the most senior Commissariats of the capital.  There were 11, but only 3 were randomly selected to convene on this matter.  They would have to vote unanimous my fate and if they could not agree it would likely mean my final reassignment.

The General made no stir and stood at ease in a box a few hundred feet from an elevated platform with a simple chair that I was made to sit in.  The Commissariats began speaking and deliberating my fate.  They asked if I knew what I stand accused of and I acceded I did and was ready to accept what decision they had made.

To my surprise, the first Commissariat who stood on the right of the other two began sharing that they do not find me guilty of the Artesian movement as they themselves had concocted the silly scheme to test many a foolish young Commissar.  I had not been fooled by it.  Instead, they offered a seat at their council, next to my brother.

They said I had demonstrated my faith in the Politiburo.  Steadfast even when tested and even when given a sentence, took so without complaint and served it in the full belief and loyalty to the party.  They found this most enlightening and of praise.  While most would have lamented their fate or lambasted the party for an unfair judgement, I had not.

The Politiburo is very fragile and can be shattered at any moment.  This would bring about chaos and ruin.  They seek out Commissars who can demonstrate they truly believe in the principles of the party to become the next generation of leaders.  They had put considerable faith and hope that it would have been people like Karl Knutmudsen and were both appalled and later relieved in their surprise discovery in me.  Somehow I bested their most brightest of students.

I could not believe what they were saying and asked them I had not bested anyone.  I didn't do anything and their might be a serious misunderstanding in my capabilities or of the entire situation that has transpired the last few years.

The mood quickly darkened and the 2nd Commissariat felt offended and angrily recriminated me in saying that was I rejecting such a grand offer to join the highest seat in the Republic?

I did not reject the offer only that I would be found wanting if it was bestowed upon me.  They then deliberated and agreed and felt the suitable punishment would be reassignment.

Sophie then spoke on my behalf and asked why was I summoned here if that was all they had intended.  The Commissariats were all taken aback by this girl speaking to them as if their equal.  They looked towards Wolf who mulled his hat in his hands and said nothing.

I looked to Sophie and implored she not say anything incriminating.  She didn't and responded that she heard Karl Knutmudsen speak and while she didn't understand the Artesian movement, she felt she was very nearly a convert to it.

This gave pause to the Commissariats who huddled between themselves.  They then spoke out towards Wolf and asked if this was fact was withheld from them.  He nodded it was.

Then they had no choice but to declare Wolf would be reassigned as well.  And as for Sophie, they pondered the Island.  But decided she must select someone to take her place or I would be sent to the Island.

Wolf was summarily vacated a Commissar.  He was sent to a camp.  His son Sigmund inquired, but found no word of where or for how long he would be sentenced, only it was for hard labor.  He was found wanting.  A new Commissar was selected and granted to a Yorkman, for no other reason than there had not been an Adelaide or Yorkman in the city Politiburo for enough generations.

I asked to be sent to the Island, in which Sophie replied she would go as well.  She named Oliver instead.

Chapter 16 - Capital

I had been to my cousins home in the coastal provincials and I've had the privilege to see the sights of the Capital with my father and brother.  They went on official business when our father was a Commissar.

We would go to the Great Hall of the People and pay homage to our forebearers.  It was an auditorium of immense size and splender and one felt like a tiny speck of sand in the universe shuddering beneath that large canvas of concrete, steel and glass.

It was also where our father introduced us to all the delights and privileges for those reserved to senior party elite and included the inner core of those who were of the 47 signatories.  It was where we met representatives of each of the famed signatories from 1 to 47 and took our rightful place in mock rehearsals of that fateful day of July 16th.

As a youth surrounded by such luxury and freedom it was very easy to become jaded like so many of our peers, but somehow it grounded me and while any youth granted such access reveled for their time, I quickly tired of it and only begrudgingly accompanied father when it was of benefit to my education or career.

It was with this memory, I visited the Capital near the end of my three year sentence to meet before the inner council, which included my brother who would decide my fate.  Wolf Gustafson came in my support and in a surprise move Sophie joined him.

We stayed in the central promenade hotel.  The General had his own suite and I given a simple room.  Sophie stayed in another suite adjoining the General's, but met me in my room and we dined together in the skylight kitchen that stood nearly a mile above the city.

She had not been to the Capital since Stephan's last birthday party and they celebrated in that same famed restaurant with only starlight.  It was how she remembered everything and she laughed that she wasted so much time being cooped up in her stuffy old home when she had this to see and experience again.

She was in cheerful mood and said this would be my last meal and tomorrow my execution in the Great Square.  I added to her jest that it had not been used for public executions in centuries and the closest one would be the willing suicides of failed commissars and bureau chiefs.  And she caught me mid sentence who were all reassigned.

In all seriousness, she would not have come if this would be such a macabre spectacle as my own public execution, but she very must expected a serious outcome if Wolf had to come as I was summoned alone.

I clenched my fist reminding myself of my brother and what he said of our great uncle.  Sophie gently clasped her hand and peeled back the fingers to hold my hand.  She reassured me that whatever happens, she would share my fate.

And as quickly as the moment it faded and she went to her bubbly self admiring the city from the large windows and the fabulous meal that came in courses.

We adjourned late in the evening and I stayed up awake all night thinking not of tomorrow but strangely of Oliver and of Ingrid.  We had spoken before I left for the Capital and Ingrid had greatly improved and the Glikmann's were made aware of their daughter's existence and they begun to see her secretly with Oliver's help.

While we all were concerned, he was tired of hiding and honestly if this angered Wolf or anyone, then he would accept their fate.  He said Martha spoke positively of me, even though we barely spoke and met only that once at Sophie's garden party.

Oliver laughed and said he had an uncle who went to the Capital one.  He too was reassigned.

Chapter 15 - Garden Party

I was granted a weekend release and spent it at the Gustafson estate as their personal guest.  My quarters were in the garden house near the gazebo where I had tea with Sophie.  We usually met there each morning for breakfast and spent most of the day enjoying the garden grounds or a dip in the pool.

She was even more breathtaking and in many ways becoming more the Sophie her father remembered now that the weight of all this was being slowly lifted away.  We confided in each other many things and she shared what she heard in those meetings with Knut.  None of it made any sense and she said the same exact words to her father who also didn't understand any of it.

I tried to let it all soak in and at first it was all just gibberish.  And it still remained gibberish in my conscious mind.  I asked after all those years, did any of it make any sense and she nodded no, not any improvement in her understanding.  She thought that now they were free to speak with one another that maybe in our shared collective minds we might start to figure out this whole Artesian thing.

When I told her what Wolf had said about this all being a silly hoax she said that might be true as her father doesn't lie about such things.  If anything he will just withhold information and slowly release little tidbits at his own pace.  But she thinks something changed in the translation and perhaps what the Capital thought was a silly hoax, might actually have connected with people like Kart Knutmudsen and he saw things differently.

As she rested her head on my arm, with her soft hair gently brushing against me she confessed that when she was in those meetings, each subsequent sermons it was as if Karl's way with words danced inside her head and made her ears start to glow.  She couldn't quite understand what it was or why it made her feel that way, but only that she saw Stephan must have felt it first.  This dismayed her as she knew she would soon lose him and very quickly she would be lost too.

Karl knew everything.  It's because she told him.  She offered herself in exchange for Stephan.  He politely refused and then summarily rejected both of us from the Artesians.  It devastated Stephan the most.  He most likely had already become a willing convert at that point.

Perhaps Karl was fearful of Wolf and what he would to him, to all the Artesians when he realized he brainwashed Stephan.  Sophie demurred that was an easy answer and somewhat obvious, but Karl didn't seem the type to be afraid of people like Wolf.  He was afraid, but certainly not of death.

That's what troubled her was she went through the charades of excoriating him while he was in prison, but something changed the night he died.  He uttered something to her that didn't make any sense and bid her adieu.  She had years to think about it and she felt in some ways, Karl got himself killed to help end it all and allow everyone to escape, Oliver, Ingrid, Sophie and even myself.

And while self-sacrifice sounds very much like the Knut, why run from the guards and force them to shoot him in the back?  Prison has numerous ways he could have ended his life, even in a spectacular fashion to satisfy Wolf.  Probably, only Karl would be the only one who can answer that.  It would be about as profound as figuring out what this whole hoax of an Artesian, Muses or whatever the Politiburo wants us to believe its called or stands for.

What would be the next move?  I had two more years on my sentence and while it was quite mild and my weekends were spent in total paradise with Sophie Gustafson in my arms, I felt things would be ripped from me yet again.  Sophie stretched her arms and leaned in closer, she said Wolf wouldn't do that.  He's now told you everything he probably knows, short of actual names of the higher ups and even she doesn't know that.  Her father does things sometimes when he is truly afraid and he probably is seeking someone to look after her.

She admires her brother Sigmund, but he's not like Stephan and certainly not Wolf.  He's just another tool.  He is her brother and she will always love him, more than she could love anyone, but she is honest of his faults and shortcomings.

But today was not to wallow in self pity and reflection.  She invited me she had additional guests and was hosting a private garden party with a dozen of friends from university.  They all gathered round a large seating on a veranda overlooking the pool.  It was the same ground of girls that once included Ingrid Glikmann, but now only her older sister Martha was in attendance.

Martha was standoffish and made her introduction.  While she looked very much like her sister, she was a bit taller, but with a more average appearance.  She was well aware of the Gustafson's and wary to know me beyond my name.  I obliged and gave her room as I listened to a dozen ladies speak at a blitz about anything and everything.

The party concluded a few hours later and my time was done.  A pair of prison guards arrived in a car and ushered me into the back seat.

Chapter 14 - Wolf's Island

You could have given the Island where Ingrid Glikmann was imprisoned any horrible name and it would come up woefully short.  Only those most despised and hated by the state are sent to Ingrid's Island as it was now called.

It was reserved for only the most extreme offenders with no hope of restoration of their rights or any privileges.  A never ending life of misery and woe.  Here was the final resting place of poor Ingrid.

Propaganda reels are made by the overseers making a true macabre masterpiece to frighten young school children.  The films are shown once a month and some are so heinous even grown men in prisons weep.

At my behest, Ingrid was miraculously transferred.  Any memory or trace of her was wiped out and no one questioned her sudden disappearance from the monthly reels, most assumed the worst.  And to the Politiburo's credit they never show the final demise of a prisoner only their endless and agonizing slow decline.

Ingrid was transferred to the home of Oliver Pleagos.  It was not her idea, but she readily accepted.  The prison guards in charge of her transfer toyed with her and mocked and laughed at how terrified she was when they pretended to be turning around to send her back to the Island.  For eight days they toyed with her this way before finally transferring her to a train bound for the Pleagos plantation.  The guards were impressed by her genuine screams and guttural begging each time they made her believe she was going back to the Island.

Oliver was horrified and enraged as he held and embraced what was nothing more than a shell of Ingrid Glikmann.  Any hint of life gone from her blank gaze and she was near catatonic except for any mention of the Island would set her off into a frenzy.  He told me all of this and while deep down he wanted vengeance, he was grateful that she was freed and he would do his best in her recovery.  She will never be the same.

Wolf made it known that he offered this courtesy.  He trusted both Oliver and myself that this would be the end of it for the Artesians and both Ingrid and Oliver would be allowed to live quietly so as not to upset Sophie and myself.  He was reticent that he had to make an example of poor Ingrid and even more so of John who he wished to release, but due to circumstances of their own making had condemned them.

I was more rebellious in my response and asked if this was just another of his games and a test of sorts to put us all back in some kind of mix to see what new insights may pop up.  Wolf frowned and admitted he never considered such an idea, but now that it has become indeed a new mix, he was hoping there would be no new insights, in truth, he was tired of this whole Artesian affair and wanted no more of it.  He takes no pleasure in all of this, he already has lost a son and in many ways his daughter as well.

He was then more forthcoming and called the Artesian just a hoax concocted by the higher ups in the Capital.  It proved much more effective than they could have ever imagined and was initially used as a tool to weed out insurrection or potentially rebellious party members.  They've used variants of the whole Artesian spin in other Politiburo's and all achieved similar levels of success in strike fear and drive those who remained into ever frighteningly blind loyalty to the greater cause.  In the provincial coastal towns it was known as the Muses and in some of the low lying reaches they spun it as something else and he was certain their were at least a half dozen other variants and each with their own willing fall guy like Karl.

He has no idea what gibberish Karl Knutmudsen was saying in his secret sermons and Artesian cult meetings.  As none of that was ever planned by the Capital and even more so surprised the higher ups who tasked Wolf to investigate and root out what Karl was up to.  He found nothing, even sacrificing his own children Stephan and Sophie who surreptitiously and unwittingly made pawns to infiltrate Karl's cult.  It nearly broke his heart when this gibberish and filth Karl was uttering actually was making a real effect on Stephan and soon would consume Sophie.

I am on my own personal island.  Wolf's Island as he would say it.  Ingrid escaped hers.  Wolf would never escape his.